SpaceX reveals plans for orbital data centers, Terafab ahead of historic IPO

GRIMES COUNTY, Texas (KBTX) – Ahead of what could be the largest stock offering in American history, SpaceX is giving the public a real look at the future of the company. Some of that future could be built right here in the Brazos Valley.

In a series of videos posted to Elon Musk’s personal X account this week, Musk and SpaceX CFO Brett Johnsen laid out an ambitious vision for artificial intelligence, space-based computing, and the proposed Terafab chip manufacturing facility planned for Grimes County.

This week, SpaceX is publicly detailing its plan to put artificial intelligence into orbit.

The concept calls for launching solar-powered satellites carrying computer chips into space, running AI at a scale never attempted on Earth. The satellites would be powered entirely by the sun, cooled by the vacuum of space, and connected to users on the ground through SpaceX’s existing Starlink network.

SpaceX says it is targeting one gigawatt of orbital AI compute by the end of 2026, scaling to 100 gigawatts within three-and-a-half years.

Where Grimes County fits in

To power those orbital data centers, SpaceX says it needs chips, a lot of them. That is where Terafab comes in.

This week, SpaceX publicly pitched Terafab, the proposed chip manufacturing facility at the Gibbons Creek Reservoir site in Grimes County, as a potential 100 million square foot operation. To put that in perspective, you could fit more than 1,700 football fields inside it. That is more than every high school football field in the state of Texas combined.

SpaceX says the facility is needed because the company currently relies on overseas chip manufacturers, specifically Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, known as TSMC, for most of its chips.

“We are doing this because we are very concerned about the supply chain constraints,” Johnsen said. “We need to make sure that we have assured supply of silicon. As an American, it’s awesome to have more semiconductor manufacturing in America.”

Despite the ambitious pitch, SpaceX’s own federal filing tells a more cautious story.

In the Form S-1 the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 20, SpaceX admits it has only agreed with Tesla on a “general framework” for Terafab — with no timeline, no budget and no binding deal. The filing warns that the project may not achieve commercial viability.

Even Musk himself acknowledged the uncertainty this week.

“This is not a promise of what we’ll do,” Musk said in one of the videos. “This is what we are going to try to do and think we probably can do.”

SpaceX’s IPO goes public this Friday under the ticker symbol SPCX on the Nasdaq. The company is targeting a valuation of $1.77 trillion, which would make it the largest stock offering in American history.